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1.1.10-Pilferingapples
Brick!club Book1 Chapter 10: The Bishop In The Presence of An Unfamiliar Light Oooh, lots of interesting translation divergences in this one! Denny vs. FMA: The Conventionist inspires “estrangement” vs “aversion” He’s a “villainous” sheep vs a “such a black” sheep People accept red in a “hat” vs.”worship it in a chapeau” Conscience is “the amount of inner knowledge we possess” vs “conscience is science”. …I really LIKE “conscience is science”. But then, not gonna bother hiding it, I really like everything the Conventionist has to say. I suspect he had the potential to be a controversial character, and I know the French Revolution still causes some divisions of opinion (hi, BunniesandBeheadings!) but I’m completely on the side of the revolutionary impulse even though the actual process got,er,let’s go with complicated. So I know I’m a bit of an easy mark for the points in this chapter, and I know Hugo was pushing these points hard. But well, I AM an easy mark, and this whole dialogue had me punching the air in enthusiasm like I haven’t since,oh, AT ALL. I like the Bishop, more or less, but I’m WITH the Conventioneer. Revolution fangirling aside (but I want to fangirl so much!) it strikes me with this chapter that the Bishop’s character suffers from what Hugo later talks about as incompleteness “insofar as the absolute can be incomplete”. He’s embodying an ideal, but he’s lost sight of some of the practicalities, and is making an example no one can follow. I like him a lot better in this chapter, arguing with someone else who has ideals that are at least as considered and important to him, even if constructed along different lines. He seems a lot more human just by the end of the chapter, even though of course he’s not making any massive visible life changes based on one conversation. And also of course, he’s set up in a life where no one’s really in a position to argue with him much— anyone who comes to see THE BISHOP is either going to be in authority over him or looking to him for authority; there’s no one to correct him when he overdoes the whole high ideal bit. But I can see I’ll have more reason to talk about that in the next chapters, so I’ll save it for then… Commentary Opabine Ah! my favourite bishop chapter (for a lot of the reasons you mentioned; this is a v. good post) One of the most interesting (linguistically) lines in this comes as the conventionist is wrapping up his speech; in French, he says, “Je m’arrête, j’ai trop beau jeu.” Wilbour has this as “I must stop. I have too good a cause”; Hapgood says “I have too much the advantage”. (how frustrating, my Fahnestock-Macafee is on loan). My pocket French dictionary, however, has the word “jeu” associated with gaming definitions; it’s the word for “deck” in the phrase “deck of cards”, it’s the word for “bet” in “place your bet” - and, of course, as all first-year French students know, its most simple meaning is just “game”. I think this is very interesting, not only for the sake of puns (“For god’s sake, Grantaire, our cause isn’t a game!” Well, actually…) Whether or not Hugo agrees with this translation, I think that “far too beautiful a gamble” is a rather lovely way of referring to revolution. Kcrabb88 I am completely loving this chapter. I’m also completely loving the Conventionist. I pretty much just enthusiastically agreed with everything he said, and wow, all the Enjolras/Amis comparisons there are to make here! But I shall save them. I completely agree about the Bishop seeming significantly more human here; he feels a range of human emotion, he doubts the Conventionist, he doubts himself, and yet he seems to try very hard to comprehend this man who appears to be far outside the Bishop’s normal range of understanding. But still the Bishop tries, and it was very interesting and actually a bit touching to watch him process the Conventionist’s words and coming to the understanding that this man was fighting for his ideals just like the Bishop was, he just had a different way of going about it, and really their ideas aren’t so different; both seek to help the poor and the oppressed. The fact that the Bishop asked for the Conventionist’s benediction was a powerful moment, and even though the Bishop still has his own set of beliefs, his own choice of action, in this moment he learns to accept that there are others with different spiritual/religious beliefs who are still on the same path he’s traveling; trying to better the world and the plight of the people. To me, it’s almost as if the Bishop is reminded of why he lives the way he does after his conversation with the Conventionist. I also noticed that three of the things the Conventionist specifically mentioned wanting to exterminate by getting rid of the king (the prostitution of woman, the slavery of man, and night for the child) are strikingly similar to the three things mentioned in the preface to the novel (the ruin of woman by starvation, the degradation of man by poverty, and the dwarfing of childhood by spiritual and physical night). Seeing the very near similarities in wording almost makes me wonder if the Conventionist is, at least in part, almost Victor Hugo himself? I’m not sure how far I could take that argument, but I was very struck by the reappearance of that wording from the preface, which I would imagine was written by Hugo? Although someone correct me if I’m wrong. The whole scene almost seemed like a sort of meeting of the minds between revolution and religion, and how, when you get to the heart of things, and at their best, both schools of thought are working towards the same goals, only they go about it in vastly different ways, and certainly arguments could be made as to which is more effective than the other, and perhaps most powerfully, they might do well to work together when possible. But very interesting chapter! Theonlycheeseleft I really liked this chapter a lot. I also like, first of all, that we get to see a bit more of the human side of the Bishop - that he knows he should visit the conventionary, that he even tries to visit the conventionary, but that his own prejudices actually stop him from doing so until he is practically obliged. I am having far less happy-Bishop-feels than I was my first Brick reading, and at this point, I am just happy to see the Bishop actually struggling with something (I may still be a bit irritated at him FRIGHTENING THE WOMEN HE LIVES WITH TO DEATH). Also, i think this is the first bit in the Brick where we start talking revolution. As much as Hugo seems to idealize revolution, I find it interesting that our first introduction to it here is through a social outcast. Obviously, Hugo is channeling all his revolutionary zeal through the convetionary, but at this point, are we not supposed to be sympathizing with the Bishop? The complexities of this are fascinating. ALSO, REVOLUTIONARY SPEECHIFYING WHEEEEE. I am a pretty big fan of calm conversations where two rational people speak politely of heated topics (maybe occasionally getting snippy at each other) and can both respect each other despite their disagreements. A BIG FAN. Also, this: "I mean to say that man has a tyrant, ignorance. I voted for the death of that tyrant. That tyrant engendered royalty, which is authority falsely understood, while science is authority rightly understood. Man should be governed only by science." and this: "I did not think that I had the right to kill a man; but I felt it my duty to exterminate evil…I voted for fraternity, concord, the dawn." sounds rather familiar, doesn’t it? (Skipping ahead a few hundred pages here): A conflagration can create and aurora, no doubt, but why note await the dawn? A volcano illuminates, but daybreak furnishes a still better illumination. And with all the talk of progress? Could Hugo already be channeling a certain moth-loving philosopher guide? There are some rather obvious differences, but still, I couldn’t help but get some major deja vu here. Sorry I bring everything back to Amis. Laissezferre (reply to Theonlycheeseleft) YES. I thought of the exact same thing. For me, the concept of the revolution being unfortunate but necessary is already tied up with Mr. Peace & Progress, so it’s impossible for me to miss the point. I suppose these recurring ideas are only a reflection of how Hugo strongly feels about revolutions as a whole. I actually enjoyed seeing the Bishop struggle a bit here, seeing as how easy the previous chapters have been on him. Funnily enough, Julie Rose points out that the Bishop asking to be blessed by the conventionist is one of the controversial scenes in the book. The family of the actual person the Bishop was modeled from (I forget the name) was furious. Gascon-en-exile I’ll agree that the FMA translation seems to be more comfortable with figurative language used in the original, though Hugo can’t take credit for “conscience is science” (though the words are identical in French, Hugo can only manage so much brevity, I suppose). I think one of the biggest problems I have with this particular livre is that it’s so episodic - we get all these different stories of the bishop’s life that together create a fairly developed character, but with only a very slight sense of chronological ordering or continuity. From what I can recall this isn’t the only livre in the Brick with this problem, but I guess I’ll talk about those as they come up. Myriel here is refreshingly more well-rounded than previously, realizing that he hasn’t reached his own ideal and perhaps even questioning the value of the ideal itself (or at least parts of it). Asking for the conventionist’s blessing - and then being denied it because of his death - was especially powerful. For some reason I thought that he was going to have more of a defense for the dispossessed aristocrats who lost wealth and position - and sometimes their heads - to the Revolution considering he’s in such a position himself, but it ended up being mostly about Louis XVII. Overall, though, I’m fairly anti-conventionist, if only because I have a soft spot for sympathetic portrayals of royalty/nobility/Créole aristocracy even as they’re brought low and can bring forth only successively impoverished generations that lose themselves to dejection and substance abuse and morbidity and suicide and negative religious determinism whilst the increasingly affluent former working classes are all firmly of the opinion that the fallen deserve every humiliation they receive. I find it quite applicable to my own life. Still, I believe this chapter is just as important for setting up the political context of Hugo’s message as the beginning of this livre is for setting up the spiritual dimensions. It also firmly expresses a stance on ‘93, which is always difficult to talk about in term of ethical and philosophical principles. Since he gets that out of the way fairly early, Hugo is free to explore all sorts of other moral dilemmas later on. Pilferingapples (reply to Gason-en-exile) So you…want the royals to survive their downfall so you can watch their slow degradation and decline into increasing irrelevance in a world that has no room even for the memory of their power? …Woah. I thought *I* had a problem with the aristocracy. You are *mean*. Totally giving you a seat on the committee when the day comes. Meanwhile, good point about the structure here leaving Hugo free to revel in glorious revolutionary adventures later. Thanks for sparing us one more digression, Conventionist G! Gascon-en-exile (reply to Pilferingapples' reply) Uh…yeah, let’s go with that.